


just another summer storm

by Piyo13



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, aka me trying to figure out why thranduil acts the way he does in the hobbit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 17:09:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5635063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piyo13/pseuds/Piyo13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It curls in his gut like the low, dense heat of summer before the rain. Summer before the lightning, before the storm. He feels as though his hair stands on end, though he knows it doesn’t, because he is indoors and the storm has yet to breach even the westernmost ends of his forest.</i>
</p>
<p>Or, Thranduil is scared and there's a thunderstorm above Mirkwood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just another summer storm

**Author's Note:**

> I don't actually know how to make a bow, and Tîniavas (tîn = quiet, iavas = autumn) is the name I've chosen to give Thranduil's wife 
> 
> Inspiration came from Thranduil's line in BotFA, when he says to Gandalf, "Sometimes a storm is just a storm"; it intrigued me and I wondered what would make him say such a thing, which to my ears sounded almost like denial. And so this happened.

It curls in his gut like the low, dense heat of summer before the rain. Summer before the lightning, before the storm. He feels as though his hair stands on end, though he knows it doesn’t, because he is indoors and the storm has yet to breach even the westernmost ends of his forest.

His body, however, will not listen to reason. Thranduil makes his rounds, chats kindly with the cook—earning himself a biscuit, which he takes with a smile, because he doubts his cook will ever think of him as anything other than an Elfling, and also because the cook's biscuits are truly delectable—and ends up in his office.

It's a grand, open room, built on the opposite side of his palace from his bedroom at Tîniavas' command, when she'd caught him leaving royal papers on their bed one time too many. It sits near the top of the palace, and its windows open into the thick canopy of the forest. Normally Thranduil finds himself eased by the airiness of the room, despite the workload it generally entails; but today, his private storm follows him there.

He settles down to work.

It's busywork, and Thranduil knows that; were he to leave, Feren and his formidable administrative team would easily be able to run the kingdom for a century or ten without his input. But Thranduil enjoys overseeing the day-to-day flow of his people, and so Feren dutifully places the reports on his desk, about everything from depth of topsoil in the grain fields to the increasingly worrying incidences of spider sightings. Thranduil reads them all through, signing where necessary and making notes to have details forwarded to those whom it may concern.

The reports keep him occupied—or at least, distracted—as the clouds from the west billow in, white fading to steely blue-grey, the scent of rain carrying on the rumble of distant thunder. The pit of Thranduil's stomach churns.

Of a sudden, he finds himself stifled, unable to breathe, and exits through the window. His guards—he had never wanted them, surely there are better ways for those Elves to spend their days, but his father had insisted, and Feren after that, and so Thranduil had bowed his head and acquiesced to being trailed every time he left his keep—will berate him later, for irresponsibility and impulsivity and a whole plethora of other large, pretentious words, but for now he just needs _away_ , and as soon as he can manage it.

The window ledge leads down to a thick branch, and Thranduil follows that branch to the tree-trunk, then to another branch, then another tree altogether. Soon he's racing through the forest, letting his body work as it sees fit while his mind wanders. Somewhere along the way he discards his outer robes, leaving them hanging on a wayward branch and himself in only his light tunic and buckskin leggings.

He runs until his lungs protest for lack of proper breath—with a cause, this time—and alights to the ground in a small clearing, one of many he's passed, just as the first raindrops start to fall. A deer trail bisects the meadow, and Thranduil follows it to the eves of the forest, letting the broad leaves shield him from the mild drips.

His breath returns quickly, his heartbeat descending back to normal, but still it feels like a vise has been tightened around his chest. He'd watched crafters making a bow, once. They'd slathered the wood with a special paste, lain it with the grain aligned just so, and clamped it together with the vise. He remembers one of the crafters explaining to him how the pressure had to be just right; too loose, and the wood wouldn't stick and the bow would fall apart, but too tight, and the wood would splinter before it was ever used.

Thranduil feels a bit like the wood, except there was no one to smother him with glue. Maybe the awful pressure is all that's keeping him in one piece.

He draws a deliberately deep breath, forcing his chest to expand.

He can remember what he had for dinner this very night three centuries ago (venison stew with herbs imported from southern Harad, it had been delicious, almost as much as the biscuits from earlier), he can remember the exact countenance of Durin IV (so similar to young Thorin II, when he'd lived in Erebor), but even with his Elfin memory, he is hard-pressed to remember a time when the throat-constricting _fear_ wasn't present.

He supposes that his earliest days in Doriath were free of it. But only the earliest, because then the Naugrim had attacked and Melian's Girdle shattered, and though Dior had rebuilt, the kinslaying sons of Fëanor had come, and after that his father had taken him east, into unknown lands, and Thranduil has been watching his back ever since.

Especially since Dagorlad.

There is a shadow present, always, as the edges of Thranduil's mind, and he doesn't know if it's real or imagined yet, knows only that his skin crawls and his hair stands on end, with or without provocation. He fears it, he fears the return of dark powers and the destruction they herald, and above all he fears for his people, and for his son. For what the Darkness means for _them._

And no matter how hard he tries, it still—the fear, it still twists through his innards, nests in his marrow, makes his scars and his blind eye _burn_.

He hates it.

Thranduil shudders as thunder breaks over his forest, deep and dark and promising a deluge. The already grey skies deepen in color, and Thranduil hears the first wave of advancing rain. At first their patter is caught completely by the trees, but soon not even the breadth of the Greenwood's leaves can hold it back, and rivulets pour down on Thranduil's head.

Soon he is drenched, his thin tunic as plastered to his skin as his hair is to his scalp. He looks up to the sky as it hangs low over his small glade, and lets the cold rain comfort him, console him, even if only for a little while. He knows storms are said to be portents of misery and fell times, and that the fury of a tempest is a danger not lightly reckoned with; but here, in his forest, the storm is just one of many that keeps the woods watered, not a harbinger. The rainwater fills the void where the shadows are, and the crisp air is suddenly breathable and light.

"Lord Thranduil!" His guards have found him, now, and he slides on his mask of poise and being put-together, smiling slightly at the Elf who emerges from the trees. Not a guard, just a tracker; but his guards cannot be far behind.

"I am sorry to have lost you," Thranduil says, though in truth he is not sorry at all.

The tracker shakes her head, seeming momentarily at a loss for what to do. Then she finally settles on gesturing back towards their home. "My Lord, it is wet outside, surely you would prefer to be indoors?" Thranduil smiles again at that, because he knows the elleth has a hood on her uniform, and yet there she stands, letting the water soak her through.

"Ah, Ruel," Thranduil says, looking upwards once more. "Sometimes, a storm is just a storm."

She looks at him oddly, and doesn't say anything. Still, he follows her back, the constant anxiety alleviated as the steady downpour continues, and the intermittent thunder rumbles lowly through the sky once again.

_Yes_ , he thinks, _sometimes a storm is just a storm._


End file.
